People in Hawaii still talk about a certain event. When the pandemic shutdowns were at their worst, the beaches were empty. It got quiet on the trails. Every day, thousands of tourists walked through Hanauma Bay, but for the first time in decades, it was empty. People who grew up on the islands talk about those months with a strange mix of relief and grief: relief that the stress was off, grief that it took a global disaster to get there. There was a lot of stress when tourism came back in full force.
The visitor economy in Hawaii has never been easy to understand. About 21% of the state’s economy comes from tourism, which supports more than 240,000 jobs. With those kinds of numbers, it’s hard to argue for limits without getting pushback from the hospitality industry right away. Still, by 2022, polls showed that two-thirds of Hawaiians thought the islands were being run for tourists at the expense of the people who live there. That’s not a crazy idea. That means most people in a community feel like they are guests in their own home.
The Hawaii Tourism Authority did its best to answer. Hawaiians, or kanaka maoli, made up most of the board for the first time in January 2022. The change felt important. When the board changed its stated mission from marketing to “destination management,” it created Destination Management Action Plans (DMAPs) to protect cultural sites, keep crowds under control, and get locals involved in making the visitor experience better. In writing, it looked like a big change.
A check done in 2025 showed a different picture. Findings from the Office of the Auditor showed that the DMAPs were badly organized, managed inconsistently, and didn’t produce many results that could be measured. Some projects that got money included giving Maui hotels reusable water bottles and giving resort guests a coloring book about cutting down trees. In the meantime, places like Lanikai and Kailua that were already very crowded didn’t see much improvement. Meetings were recorded as progress, not results reached. It’s hard not to notice the difference between what was meant to happen and what actually happened here. It’s even harder to ignore how the people who live here feel when they do.
It wasn’t just the programs that were giving them trouble. Unstable leadership shook the agency even more, and a well-known executive was put on leave after being accused of misconduct at work. This raised more questions about the agency’s ability to stick to its own goals. Critics think that the reform effort was meant to be real but wasn’t—that it was just a rebranding exercise that moved faster than the culture of the institutions that supported it.
Still, it seems too soon to give up on the whole effort. Experiments on a smaller scale have shown what is possible. The reservation system at Diamond Head has made the experience very different by limiting the number of people who can visit the crater each day. There is now less erosion, fewer people, and more space for the place to breathe. Together with Kauai’s nonprofits, the Hā’ena community model has created something that works more like stewardship than tourism management. These aren’t perfect, but they do the job and are a more honest way to go than vague promises to be environmentally friendly.
Hawaii isn’t the only one dealing with this problem. From Santorini to Kyoto, all of these places have had to face the same truth: getting more visitors is easy; keeping them happy once they get there is the real challenge. One thing that makes Hawaii different is its culture. The land is more than just pretty views. Kanaka Maoli see it as their identity, their history, and their duty. The push to change the way people think about tourism around ideas like mālama, which means to care for what you see, is more than just a marketing strategy. It remains to be seen whether the industry fully accepts this change or just sees it as a good look.
It’s still not clear if Hawaii’s tourism industry is really rebuilding trust or just being clearer about what it wants to do. Less clear is what the people who live there want. This is a community first, people have said it in polls, at town halls, and in the words of Maui’s mayor. The business world now knows that. It needs to decide if it wants to act like that.
